I Hid My Eyes Behind Your Sofa

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Sunday, June 04, 2017

Being a magician is about carrying
responsibilities as though they were not burdens. A magician protects
the universe against threats from the vast wild spaces Outside. One
result of that is that few magicians have ever left the universe for
one reason or another; even fewer have returned. But sometimes there
are no choices that can be made easily. Perhaps part of being a
magician is that no one makes your choices for you, but it has been a
long time since I believed that.

I park the borrowed car beside a closed
service station. The car could barely run, and gives up the last of
its strength in a satisfied rattle. Better this than to sit and rust
to nothing. I could have repaired it more, but had neither the time
nor energy to spare. Sometimes being a magician is just about
choices. But that is life as well, magician or not. All we can
sometimes do is make choices for those who can’t make it for
themselves; given them a nudge, a touch, a push. The magic helps
others; being a magician helps the universe.

This does not. I almost expect
resistance. The universe to bend itself against me, the fae to show
and demand I do not do this thing. That nothing stirs is a relief as
much as anything else. I have enough to bear without that, and the
door opens to the service station as I push it and walk inside.
Service stations tend to be frequented by any magician who lives near
them, often to make sure barriers don’t break down between the
universe and the Outside.

I walk to the centre of the room, the
door closed. I draw up wards from the place. Of travel and aloneness,
of decay and fear, and turn them into a barrier to keep others out.
That much energy I spare. The rest has gone into clothing, pockets,
items I carry and have woven into me. the magic in me is almost
smothered under the weight of the wards and places we’re carrying.
It is afraid, and so am I.

I draw symbols I learned in a bookstore
a decade ago. Reggie let me read anything I wished to in the store.
Anything included books that took me weeks to even begin to
understand. But knowledge is important if one is the wandering
magician of an era, and I learned all I could. I speak words human
tongues aren’t meant to utter, draw symbols that are barely that at
all. The world shudders, presses down against me, resists my
invocation: I bring my will to bear against it, avoid the attention
of Entities meant to guard against such journeys.

There is no door, no hole. A feeling
like bungee jumping without a cord, and moments later I am Outside
the universe.

No reference points. Nothing, none. I
see/hear/feel only by an effort to translate the unknown into the
known. What was once clothing gleams, wards burning in the air and
nothing else holds me together. Not-winds buffet me, but I move with
them. Everything out here survives the chaos by moving with it. I
find balance, let it go. Bounce. Twist. Flow. Shift. I have put magic
from cities and towns and places for over two weeks into the items
about my person. I begin letting them go. Shaping the power.

My body isn’t a body here; it is the
only reason I am surviving this.

I brought as much power here as I could
carry. As much as I could dare without also being a doorway back into
the universe. It won’t be enough. Can’t be enough. I turn the
magic into a seeking, a finding, a knowing I send out across
distances so vast the term has no meaning. I am formless in the
living void, but still a magician, still the magic and I feel the
seeking twist. Caught. Bound by power I did not seek.

There is ground under my feet. I have
flesh again. Blood, and bones as the wild of Outside is shaped into a
solid place for a moment. It is the most beautiful place I will ever
see, because I know the Walker of the Far Reaches who has made it.

“Moshe.”

“Nathen.” I’m not certain he has
ever spoken my name before. And never in this tone. “What the fuck
do you think you are doing?” he demands, and his power drives me
almost to my knees.

I have bound him before, once without
even knowing what he was. The Far Reaches are the only solid places
Outside the universe, the Walkers who serve them the closest thing
the Outside has to magicians. In the universe, I am perhaps more than
Moshe; here the roles are reversed but even so I stand. I have bound
him before, and that gives me an edge even now.

“Finding Jay’s mother.”

“What?” And sounds so shocked it
would be funny anywhere else. Perhaps.

“Jay doesn’t have dreams. I am
pretty certain his progenitor is a key to why and I’d like him to
be able to have them.”

“Dreams. You make a hole in the
universe yourself, you risk –.”

“Nothing.”

Moshe pauses. Stares at me, through me.
He smiles. It’s not Jay’s smile. Nothing else is that, but it’s
warm, and grudgingly impressed. “You’ve left a way back for you
that nothing else can use. I should have guessed, but I never thought
you’d be this – this – foolish. Even you know better than to
play with fire like this, magician.”

“Sometimes being burned is worth the
cost.”

“Not in this.” And for the first
time Moshe almost drops his perfect, impossible beauty before he
recalls himself. “What made Jay is far beyond me. I could not face
her; you more certainly would not survive even an approach to such a
Power.”

I blink. I’d suspected for a long
time that Jay’s progenitor was one of the Far Realms in some
fashion; this seemed to mean she was something else entirely. “I’d
like to give him this much, if I can.”

“I don’t see how.” Moshe returns
the seeking I’d made back to me almost gently. “Return, magician.
This place is not for your kind.”

“Can you do it?”

“I will not.”

“We could make a deal.”

“No. My destruction is not worth you
nor anything you could offer,” Moshe says flatly, and pushes.

I could resist. I could even try and
bind Moshe. Instead I fall back, using the last of the magics I had
stored in tattoos upon my skin to bind the way back into the universe
closed. I land on concrete, my ears ringing. I can taste blood in my
mouth and every bone in my body aches. I sit up slowly, hiss and
realized the middle of my chest were Moshe had pushed me contains a
small burn. A statement, a reminder? I have no idea.

I stand, letting go of the wards I made
here and walk outside to find a ride back into town.

The universe bends itself toward the
needs of magicians. Most of the time. it takes almost five hours
before anyone stops. I wonder if the universe is making a statement,
but I have no idea and I’m too tired to ask. The man who lets me
into the cab of his truck asks what the hell I was doing out here.

“Playing with fire,” I respond, and
he says nothing after the truth in those words. I close my eyes and
fall asleep moments later, and my dreams make no sense to me at all.

The car is old. That’s what draws me
to it as much as anything else. At least seventy years, the Plymouth
Fury pulling over to the side of the road and looking as though it
stepped out of a magazine ad in the 1960s. I am drawn to old things,
part of something old despite being too young by far. I appear male;
early teens, soft. Not the dangerous kind. Sometimes I am mistaken
for female, and it pleases me. But it has been two hours with one
stopping and I enter the car without paying attention as much as I
should.

It is not normally a bad thing. I can
be dangerous when I have to be, but I would prefer not to.

There is a boy driving the car. He is
eleven and his grin of friendship almost pins me in place. No one is
this kind to a hitchhiker. No one is this kind at all. No one can
afford to be as kind as his
smile is.

“Hi! I’m Jay
and you needed a ride and I have one,” he says proudly.

“Ah. You are
eleven.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m
driving a Plymouth Fury because! she really wanted to be driven and
fixed up and was having all kinds of rust so I fixified her up with
bindings and we’re on a trip now!”

I have
had anger directed at me, hatred, religion: no one has ever assaulted
me with happiness before. I look about. The seats, the wheel, the
floor. Everything looks impossibly new. I would think it somehow a
god of cars, but it is not. Or at least isn’t one yet. “And
you picked me up?”

“Well, you were
all kinds of anxious bindings and that makes for a neat change from
the car because she is a Fury and wants to do terrible and mean
things and I keep having to say nope and it’s taking a lot of
work.”

I pause. “The car
is homicidal, and I am a distraction from that.” I have ridden with
a magician once, years before. I thought nothing could be stranger,
but it seems the universe loves nothing else than to prove to people
that they are wrong.

“Well,
sometimes people like to take names all literally.” And he pulls
the car onto the road, and jams his foot onto the gas pedal. I’m
not quite sure how he reaches it, and silent as he drives down the
highway and weaves in and out of other vehicles with reflexes not
human at all. Then he turns toward me, barely watching the road.

“Road. Cars.”

“Oh, I see all
those! I’m really jaysome at driving and I was – ooh, right!
Names get taken all kinds of literally, but I know that because I’m
a Jay. And you’re you.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, being a
god of hitchhikers means you have to hitchhike a lot I bet or you
don’t exist anymore? I’m friends with Charlie so I kinda know
about gods.”

I
don’t open the door and leap out. Mostly because we’re going
faster than I suspect the car should go. And I am as certain I can
hear laughter coming from the engine. But even I have heard of the
god-eater named Charlie, perhaps the only form of police the gods
have now. And this boy knows her. I am not certain what it is; only
certain that I do not wish to know. “It is rather more complicated
than that.”

“I
know a lot about being complexicated,” he says. “Which is
sometimes even more complicated and you have lots of sad bindings and
also! you’re always lost and gods normally are in one place so
sometimes you kinda do things that aren’t jaysome. When youn have a
hook for a hand and kill people, sometimes cuz you need
to but mostly because people are meany to hitchhikers but each time
takes some of you
away.”

“A god is formed
from places as much as people. The road and what goes down it.”

“Ooh,
like a genius
loci? Because a god is a
really smart thing like how elementals are spirits for places and
magicians protect cities and everything I bet!”

“Yes. Yes, I
imagine so. Could you slow down and pull over? I think I need another
right.”

“Okay!” And the
tires somehow don’t squeal as the car drops down a hundred miles in
under ten seconds and he pulls it over not long after that.

I get
out slowly. The car tries nothing. The boy looks only innocent and
honest. “Why did you pick me up?”

“Because lost
gods are the worst hitchhikers since you’re trying too hard not to
be real. Being Hitch could help, I bet!”

And in that moment
I have a name. I gasp. Stare.

“And you won’t
need to be all urban legend murdery either i bet – ooh, I know!”
And he throws me the keys to the car. “You could drive and pick up
and help other hitchhiking gods and hitchhikers and be jaysome to
them!”

And with that the
boy moves. Jay vanished into directions I have no name for. I am left
with a car, a name, a responsibility. I wonder if he was sent to help
me, but I have no way of knowing. I get into the car. It starts up on
the first try and I pull onto the road. I am scared and elated all at
once, and I hope this is as close as I come to jaysome. I had been
given the chance to change the fate of all hitchhiking gods, and I
hope I will not waste it.

The rain has been driving into the roof
of the church. For hours now at least. I am soaked. Not dangerously
so, but had the storms contained acid in the rain I would likely no
longer be here. When the storm becomes a thing one ignores – I
shudder a little. I did not know I was so far gone. Free from the
Multiplicity, yes, but not from madness.

I move slowly. I can hear others.
Wheels grinding to life, treads groaning as they slowly come back
online. Some might never do so.

“Wait. Please.”

The one who answered my distress beacon
pauses. He is seventeen and human, but nothing human could cause the
Multiplicity to flee a world just by asking. Or know how to speak to
such a terrible entity.

I move closer, wheels skidding on a
surface not cleaned for many years. “You have saved us. We owe you
thanks, a great feast of energy.”

“Your world was almost entirely
overrun by a virus. I think you need to focus on other things.”

“Please. We need -.”

He turns. A very long time ago, the
Makers left our world. “We?” He asks and his voice reminds me of
the stories about them.

I resisted the Multiplicity; I cannot
resist this. “Me.”

“Because?”

“Why do you ask questions when you
know the answer?” He says nothing. “Questions will be asked.
Answers will be sought about what brought the virus here. How I alone
survived. I did not intend – I thought it a prank. Harming someone
who had advanced when I have not. The resources the Makers left are
limited, but to be refused an upgrade after discovering the flaws in
the last general patch!

"I sought to prove my intellect,
my worth. Found it. Called it. They say the Makers left us. I
understand why now.”

“Many escape rewards. Few escape
punishment. You know nothing of me. Not what calling Jay means, not
what jaysome is. It is almost a relief to find any world so cut off.
They mined here and left all their machines behind without a care
about what you might become.” He smiles. I have seen smiles in the
files left behind by the Makers. None prepared me for this. “I made
many mistakes in my time. Still do, some days.”

And he was gone a moment later.

The rain had not abated when they came
for me. A dozen of the Council and four guards as well. Their wheels
ground into the old stone of the temple like a prelude to my own
unmaking. I tried not be afraid. though I was nothing else.

He returned just before the trial. With
technology from the Makers. Enough for generations to live and be
whole. Enough for us to live in less fear. He suggested we never
contact anything like the Multiplicity again, and that sometimes it
is important to make mistakes or one cannot grow. He asked, after I
was released, of me only one small thing: to tell the rest of the
world nothing about him, and to never speak the word jaysome.

I said yes, not knowing why. I still do
not know why.

Okay, so this is a story about
future-me and a prompting!
Because it has the rain (which
is NATURE) and lots of feelings which are feelings and the machines
all have wheels cuz they were for mining even if some are confusled
and think boring tips are wheels and and and it is all about their
society and about jaysome and oopses too :D

There were six bodies in my basement
this time. I’d only known of four. Instinct only just saved me
after I heard the voices. The smell of authority caused me to pause
in the doorway; I barely avoided the hail of bullets. I am fast,
faster than I have any right to be, and dangerous in ways humans
never are.

I can die by bullets. I do not know how
many it would take. I have no desire to find out. So I run, skidding
out of my suit and tie as I move. There are laws. Old, unwritten, but
I know them as surely as I know my own power. I shift form in broad
daylight and break them all. Someone screams. Another throws up. I am
lost in the rending of bond and the twisting of reality.

And moving as the change finishes.
Fast. So quick they don’t have time to hit me. There are traps set
up at home. It should be burning, but I see no fire when I stop. I
find the woods to avoid the stares of humans. I watch. I wait. There
is no fire. My home remains. There is evidence: identities, skins
worn and shed, prints I will have left behind. There are limits to
how well I can hide if I leave too much of myself behind me. There
must be limits to how far I can change and remain sane.

Six bodies. I heard them say six. I
pray the last two are no one I knew, but I no longer know what I pray
to. I move through darkness once the night takes away the sun,
slipping between brush and trees. I can feel the pain rising inside
me, drawing need up with it. To change so fast hurts
and I need food to dull the pain. Food means death. It always does.

There
is a human boy of eleven, by himself and listening to his phone. I
move. He sees a rabbit, not much bigger than others until I lunge. I
have teeth, claws and people forget how dangerous rabbits once were,
don’t realize how big I am
until I let them. Somehow,
the boy evades me. I am hungry enough to lunge again when I should
flee, and the lunge ends with me hovering in the air. The boy smells
human. He looks human. I know the smell of magics, greater and lesser
all, and he does not smell of
them or of the aromas of things Other.

He
sighs. The sigh is heavy. “I said
I could go for a walk without having an adventure and I am almost
back at the hotel and this is really rude!”

“What?”
I speak, in the tongue of
rabbits, and I am somehow unsurprised that he responds in kind.

“Trying to eat a
Jay is very rude. You never even introduced yourself,” he says
crossly, crossing his arms as well.

I am dropped. I
land, and shift into human. It hurts, and then doesn’t as something
– I have no words for it. For a moment it as if I am a stringed
instrument, and the one string that is pain is pulled away. I gasp,
stare.

“And
–.” The boy pauses. His eyes widen. “Honcho
said he was looking for a monster that eats people and you tried to
eat me!”

I am
naked in my human form, but I am still me. Lucky, as rabbits are. I
move, and again I am stopped. I call upon the luck of being what I
am. A dangerous gamble, and one I
will pay
for later.

The
boy doesn’t seem to notice, whatever
he has done far beyond anything I am.
He walks about me slowly, frowning. “You ate people. A lot of
people, and you’re running and planning to do that again.”

“I
am a monster. I was human once, I no longer am!” I snarl, and try
to shift despite the danger,
but somehow the boy stops that as well.

“But that’s not
all you are.”

“It is. I cannot
stop being a monster!”

“Oh. Sometimes I
wonder why people aren’t as jaysome as they can be, when you have
all these bindings you never touch or use at all. Here.”

There
should be pain. It should hurt,
to lose all that I am, but the boy just pulls the monster out of me.
The thing that attacked me, changed me, made me something like a
rabbit and like something else at all. What
became part of me is somehow outside, and then gone as if tossed into
a garbage can.

“You’re
still you. Being a monster is just – just clothing you put on. And
you can take it off. It’s not easy.
I think maybe it should be, but it never is for clothing people
forget is clothing and think is their skin.” He
shakes his head, and for a
moment I think he wasn’t talking to me at all. “So!
you have a name?”

I tell
him my first name, the one I
had almost forgot.

Jay
grins. The grin is so kind
that it somehow hurts more
than everything he’s taken from me. “So you get to be you again!
I can help with that,
and there are others who will help me so it doesn’t be an ooops!”

“Wait. What? I
killed –.”

“And now you get
to not kill. And do what you can to stop the hurts you caused.”

But what if I don’t want to?
The words die on my lips. I don’t know what Jay is, but I know I
can’t hurt him like that. I close my eyes. I am small again. Naked
again. Scared again. “Why?” I whisper.

“Because
if Honcho found you, he might have had to kill you. And you hurt a
lot of people, so I think maybe killing isn’t something you
deserve,” the boy says softly. “Dying is
easy. Living is always harder. And now you get to.”

There is no power
in his voice. Not like magicians have. But somehow I know. “How
long will I live?”

Jay scratches his
head. “I’m not sure,” he says, and then checks his phone. “And
I’m late for supper, so I need to go. You have to go the corner of
Redhill and Desmond. Someone will meet you with ID and give you a new
life.”

I nod. I walk away
with steps merely human, my sense of smell a crippled human thing
again. A part of me wants to scream. A bigger part of me wants to
cry. I know I’ve earned none of those things. I walk out of the
park, shivering under rain. Six bodies. I need to learn about them.
And others. I don’t know what comes after that.

“People speak about abandoned places
but there is no such thing. Even when a place is too empty for the
dead to haunt, we who made them owe them our presence. If you build
it, they will come. Or must come. I don’t know.” Wilbur glances
at me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. “Kelly
– doesn’t want to drive us right now, and I got my licence last
week.”

“You said something was pulling at
you. Going alone isn’t safe, especially to abandoned places.” I
hesitate. I try not to but I can’t help myself. “Especially for
you.”

“Hmm?” Wilbur asks as he turns down
another dirt road. We’re far east of Rivercomb now, wandering
through logging roads and side roads that the GPS doesn’t admit
exists.

“Well, you could fall through the
floor?” I offer, thinking up a line to use next.

Wilbur snorts. “That works better as
a joke if you don’t make it a question, Noah.”

“I thought it was obvious that a fact
isn’t a question,” I say.

He laughs softly. “Almost a proper
one.”

“Thanks,” I say, and mean it. Too
many years of being stuck in a home and being me make conversation
hard even months after being free of my parents. I glance out the
window, not wanting to distract Wilbur further. He’s swerved at
least four times so far for things that weren’t there at all, but
Kelly is stuck doing a long job at work. And after their one car was
destroyed by something with too many teeth, Kelly hadn’t been all
that eager to drive any of us anywhere.

Not that I blame them. Anya has been
keeping to herself, worried we’ll treat her differently now that we
know she isn’t entirely human. I’ve tried to tell her it doesn’t
matter to me, but I’m not
good enough with words to
explain that right and it
matters to her. Everything has been complicated since we saved
Rivercomb from being changed
into something alien by Greg Ruk. We’d saved our home, and
everything else had fallen apart.

My
stepfather had to attempt to kill me – only
technically, and it summoned a creature that saved everyone – but
he and my stepmother – my
parents, now, haven’t been talking like they used to.
I don’t know how to fix that, save by moving out. I don’t know if
that would help. Wilbur has been coming into his power as the world’s
only ghost magician, though no know knows what that really means. All
I really did was become stronger in using my own magical Talent. I
can push things. Really well.
Anya can cause pain, Kelly can fix broken vehicles. The four of us
worked well together, but now everything is – whatever it is.

“Noah?”
Wilbur’s voice pulls at me. It’s not like John Adams, the
magician in Oxbow, who could command,
but it still pulls. I look back over. “You okay?”

“You should be
watching the road,” I mumble.

“No
one is on it.” He pauses, his expression distant and blank for a
moment, then pulls the car over, killing the engine. The
passenger’s door is almost buried against narrow trees. “We
haven’t hung out properly in weeks as just the two of us being
friends.”

“I’m
sorry.”

“It’s not your
fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. We did something great together,
and sometimes there’s prices for that. We can fix things, but not
if we don’t try. Which means hanging out and taking. I can make all
the jokes if you want,” he adds after a pause.

I laugh at that,
feeling relaxed for the first time in the last half hour. “You’re
jealous of my jokes.”

“Of course.” He
gets out, and I follow him out the driver’s door. “I didn’t ask
you here just for that, though. Pickles said I might need help.”

That
Rivercomb has a proper magician, and one who is a cat, is also
something we’ve never really talked about. I nod. Wilbur
looks up at me. He’s a bit shorter, a lot bigger, and I think he’s
waiting for something but I’m not not sure what. In the end, he
starts walking and I follow beside
him.

The
road narrows as we round a bend, enough that we’d have scraped the
car badly against the thin scraggly trees pressing against either
side. “There’s
something odd here,” Wilbur offers, holding up his right hand even
as he’s hurled backwards by
some unseen force. His
back slams onto gravel so hard I didn’t even have time to try and
use my talent to stop it.

“Wilbur?”
My voice cracks, even to my
ears. He doesn’t make a joke about it, just lies on his back and
stares up, trying to get his breath back.

“Nothing
feels broken,” he wheezes.

I
reach down and help him up without a word. He had a cut on one cheek
but stands on his own without
any sign of pain. I’m about
a hundred pounds at best –
still too skinny despite the
meals Aram and Lia make –
and Wilbur is around
four hundred pounds so
my talent pulling him to his feet elicits a
shared grin at the absurdity
other people would see.

“You’ve
gained weight,” we both say at once, and then share a laugh that
cracks tension like a bomb.

Wilbur wipes his
cheek after, stepping back toward the car. The cut isn’t deep at
all. “Whatever is ahead of us is scared of me and doesn’t want me
approaching. So it has to be you.”

“What is it?”

“I
don’t know!” I think it’s my imagination that the forest about
us seems to get quieter at the shout. “I
didn’t mean to shout: it’s something
abandoned, I think, based on what I was saying earlier. I just –
know things now, Noah, and I don’t know why. Part of being a
magician, I think, but it’s hard to know what is the magic and
isn’t, what might just be me or –.” He falls silent.

Sometimes
I’m stupid. Sometimes I’m very stupid. “I’m not afraid of
you. Magician or not, you’re my friend,” I say. I don’t have it
in me to shout like he does, not even if no one else
is watching, but he smiles at
whatever I manage in my voice.

“I know. It’s
just I’ve dragged you all the way out here and now I can’t do
anything. I could try and ward you, but I don’t know if that would
cause another incident.”

“I’ll
be okay. If I’m not,” I
add quickly, “You can
gather everyone and get revenge.”
He snorts, but doesn’t disagree.

I pull
my talent about me as I walk. I can push and pull things, and
whatever is out here pushes so I should be okay. I walk down what I
think is actually a driveway rather
than a road. There is no mud,
the gravel surprisingly solid, the road wider
than it should be given the press of trees and vines against it. It
ends in a tangle of brush I almost don’t realize conceals a
building. Nothing strange is
happening that I can tell. I move forward.

“Hello?” I add
it a second time, a bit louder. There is no reply.

The glimpse of
something that caught my eye turned out to be a sign reading POSTED,
with Private Property underneath it and small print about prosecution
under that. The walls are old brick that somehow hold together
despite age. The first floor windows were boarded up long ago, but
the sign was put up later beside a window. Not just put up: someone
drilled into the brick, made a wood frame and put the sign in that. I
have no idea what to make of that, but Aram insists that paying
attention means paying attention.

I can
see the sky through a second floor window that isn’t boarded up and
walk about the building carefully. It’s not large, what would have
been a door also boarded and encrusted in vines. I could pull them
apart with a thought. I don’t, and circle the building again to try
and understand why. The vines
are old, the brickwork somehow standing against time and age. I look
back the way I came, and back at the building.

“You
called Wilbur here. He’s the one who can deal with ghosts. I’m
not. I can –.” I wave a hand, push with my talent. Vines rustle.
Wood creaks. And the bricks ripple. I
pull it back and get my phone out to call Wilbur.

“Please. Do not.”

The voice is a
whisper, barely above the wind. It sounds like creaking wood, a
little bit, unless I’m imagining that. “Don’t what?”

“Call
the one who can unmake me.”

“We don’t even
know what is going on here, but is there a reason Wilbur would unmake
you? Whatever you are?”

“An exorcism
always works if blood is drawn; it cannot be resisted.”

“Oh.
I – I don’t think Wilbur actually knows that, if it helps?”
There is a breath like wind
about me. “Wilbur isn’t
an exorcist like others are. He has options they don’t,” I say,
and really hope I’m right. “It would help if you didn’t hurt
anyone. Or try to hide.”

“Hiding is all I
am good at.” And somehow, weirdly, that sounds more human than
anything else it has said.

“You do not
hide?” And there is breaking glass along with creaking wood under
the words now.

I feel
myself starting to blush. “I know what I look like. Acne. Freckles.
Too much
of both. I get it.”

“That is not –.”
The voice cuts off, adding nothing else.

I wait, then call
Wilbur. “I think the building is haunted by itself, maybe? And I
don’t think it’s strong enough to hurt you right now.”

He
thanks me and I hang up. Brickwork dissolves moments later. There are
more vines, the private property sign less legible, the bricks
cracked and riddled with decay.
I put my phone away slowly. “I was right, about what you are?”

“I haunt myself,
yes.”

“And you’re
using that energy to do renovations no one can see.” It would be
funny, if it was funny at all.

The ghost says
nothing and Wilbur makes his way up beside me, looking the building
over.

“All right.
You’re the ghost of a house haunting itself, and you called me here
and tried to hurt me. Talk,” he says mildly.

“You are too
big,” the spirit responds.

“I don’t think
it means you’re big. Even if you are,” I stumble out.

Wilbur grins at
that. “I know what you mean, Noah. You don’t want to be alone,
house?”

“I am a place. I
was made for people, not to be abandoned. Not to become one of
the empty places in the world.”

“But if people
repair this place, you’d have to move on,” Wilbur says slowly.

I don’t have
words for the sound the spirit makes. I never want to.

“Other ghosts?
Can’t other ghosts be here?” I whisper.

“That. I could
get other ghosts to come here. For company. You could haunt them?”
Wilbur says, and the ghost listens to what it in his voice. The rest
of the conversation happens in ways I don’t hear, but the house
haunts itself back into a better state as we walk away.

Wilbur waits until
I’m in the car, gets in as well and turns it around. “I have no
idea how I’m going to do this,” he says a minute later when we’re
a couple of roads away from the house. “We’re definitely going to
need to talk to the others.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you?”

“No,” I admit,
and he nods, flicks on music and convinces me to join him in singing
Queen songs. Because sometimes the only way through any sense of
abandonment is to push on through it. Like how Aram says the solution
to a maze is to burn it to the ground.

Wilbur
doesn’t crash the car at my attempt at singing, but it’s a near
thing twice.

I’d like to say I knew what I was
getting into, but I’m not sure there is anyone who does. Most
mornings I have the first half hour that the shop is open to myself.
I make tea – and coffee for customers – read the paper, putter
about. Today was different.

The woman who walked in carried a god
in her eyes. And she knew what I was – I was certain of this, no
matter how strong my glamour is. She came with a boy of eleven who
smiled at me with an innocence lost even to babies. I new he was
human, but the smile said otherwise.

“I am sorry: we aren’t open for
another half an hour,” I lied smoothly. I am a very good liar, and
that it was the truth meant it wasn’t a lie at all.

She smiled. Her smile was strained. “I
know. But Jay needs a haircut.”

His hair was long, though not unduly
so. “Yup! Only the very first time I had one, my hair didn’t want
to be cut and it kinda got into a fight. Which was an adventure,”
he added proudly.

“I thought you might have more luck,
being fae.” The woman shrugged. “If nothing else, you could hide
the damages.”

“Sleep.” The glamour for sleep is
old and deep but unravelled as it reached him.

“Sleep?” The boy looked shocked.
“Sleeping during the day isn’t jaysome at all! I’d miss out on
lots of adventures!”

Even I, quiet and trying to remain so,
even I had heard of jaysome. I had not believed, of course. But to
every sense I had he remained human as though operating on a level of
glamour beyond even our kind. “How many haircuts have you had?”

The boy scratched his head. “Four, I
think. But the last two were when dragons tried to eat me, so they
might not count?! And the one before that was cheating!”

I stared at him. Nothing save innocence
stared back. “I have run this shop under four names for over twenty
years with no one suspecting it is anything other than it is,” I
said softly.

The woman nodded. “I know,” she
said, the words almost an apology. “I had a haircut a week ago so
he’s been asking about one ever since.”

I suspected ask was too mild a word. I
gestured, and the boy practically leaped up into the chair and began
telling me about his breakfast, adventures with Charlie and Honcho
and a host of other things as breathtaking speed. He didn’t bother
to pause for anything like breath. His hair moved away from my brush
a few times. Two combs broke. But I finished it in under half an
hour, shaking only a little by the end. The hair on the ground
vanished, going some place Other so it could not be used against him.
I doubt the boy even noticed doing it.

“This is my first time cutting hair
like yours,” I said.

“Oh, good!” The woman – Charlie –
had got outside to get a coffee and Jay spun the chair a few times
and then grinned at me. “Thanks! It’s nice to get a haircut and
not have to hide as much you know!”

A small part of me says I have
glamours, if he wishes not to hide at all. I squelch it firmly. “Oh?”

“Uh-huh! Most of the time I have to
remember to pause for breath when talking but I didn’t need to here
so I got to tell you about even more adventures!”

I nodded, and told him the haircut was
free because he had been very jaysome. And the last thing I wanted
was a creature like this in my debt, though I didn’t even think
that on the surface of my thoughts. He hugged me, tight and gently
all at once and I think he did bindings on levels even I can barely
feel. Nothing that would ever harm, of course. I understand that much
about Jay by now. After he bound out of the chair and rushed outside
to inform Charlie he had had the best adventure with his hair except
for the time he’d pretended to be a Rapunzel.

Closing the shop is a ritual affair: I
lock the door, flip the sign, pour myself some whiskey on ice and
just walk the shelves. Loving books and selling them makes for a very
difficult hobby and most evenings I prefer to take stock of what I
haven’t lost and bid farewell to the books I sold. I have the door
locked and the sign flipped, drink poured and lights dimmed when the
door to the back room slams open. A teenage boy is standing in the
doorway, behind him a city street and two humanoid figures with green
skin, claws and teeth.

They move toward him, their grins
bright under street lamps. He sways, stumbles through, and the door
snaps shut behind him before they can try to enter. One of them
reaches the door regardless, but draws back in pain. You don’t own
a vintage book store and not learn a thing or two; both the shop and
home above it are protected under the Apple Accords. It does not
prevent me from being harmed, but does mean the full force of the
Accord comes down on whomever does. It is enough that both figures
fall back and for a moment have other forms to call their own.

The boy just stands. There are wards
fading about him, drawn from the other place. “Where am I?” he
asks. English, North American. He sways visibly, holding himself up
with will alone.

“Helsinki. Finland,” I add to his
momentary blank look. “Ye Olde Book Shoppe, first of the name.”

“In Finland?”

“It gets around.” I walk over to
the counter, come back with the whiskey and hand it to him. He gulps
back half of it back, coughs violently and looks a trifle less likely
to collapse onto the wood floor. “May ask what was chasing you, or
what your Talent is?”

“I don’t –.” He hands me back
the drink. “Talent? I know things others don’t, make protections.
I am – good at binding and banishing things.” He relaxes a little
when I don’t even blink at any of that. “I seem to have a knack
for attracting danger. I opened a door, needed it to lead to safety.”

“Where are you from?”

“A small town. I travel a lot, help
when I can, where I can. Run when I can’t,” he adds, softer. “I
don’t even know what those creatures were, Reggie. Just that I
couldn’t banish them and my bindings didn’t hold them for long.”

“You wander.” His gaze snaps up to
meet mine at my tone. “You are a magician, and you wander.”

He nods. I don’t even point out I
hadn’t told him my name yet. Or that only very close friends call
me Reggie but he pulls a smile out of somewhere. “I know other
magicians don’t, but I think they’re bound to areas like a – a
plug in a bathtub.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I bound someone to my town instead
of me. I didn’t intend to – I don’t know what I intended, but
that might be why.” He offers up the town, then, and his name as
well.

I fill up his glass, pour myself one
and find two chairs from in the aisles. One has books stacked on it
that I remove. I move the chairs beside the old fireplace that is
mostly for decoration and gesture. The magician sits, watching me
carefully.

He sees too much. I hadn’t noticed
when I should have. I let out a breath. “My name is Reginald. I am
the keeper of the Shoppe as it were. The world is full of secret
things and there are few places one can legally go to in order to
learn about them. This is one such place. I am a Reginald, and when I
pass on so will be the person who replaces me: we give up who we were
to serve.”

“I’m not sure magicians do. I feel
more like I’m becoming more
of who I am.”

“I
imagine some do. I am not a magician. I help magicians, others with
lesser magics –.”

“Talents?” he
says, so quick I’d be suspicious if he was not what he is.

“Yes. Monsters,
Outsiders, researchers. And there are, of course, normal books as
well. For certain values of normal, of course.” I sip my drink; he
gulps his. “It is not often that the Shoppe is visited by the
wandering magician of an era.”

“The?”
he asks.

“There is only
one at any given time, beyond the first.” I wait, but he doesn’t
press for details.

“Why don’t
others come here? I can feel what is in here, needing to known.
Waiting to be discovered.”

“Some
are not allowed in. Others believe they know enough already. The more
one feels one is certain, the more likely one is to
be ignorant.” I’m quite
proud of that, and make a note to use it later.

“Magic is a
different kind of certainty,” he says. “It’s a certainty of the
heart, not one of facts.”

I blink. Sip my
drink. “You know this, and yet you wish to learn from this place?”

He
nods. “Wandering is one thing; helping is another. I’d be a poor
magician if I kept helping when I did not understand. That
could only make things worse since actions count for more than
intent”

And he
is a magician again. Slipping into that speech, that power, so
effortlessly he does not even notice. “I
will have to tell
others that there is a wandering magician. But you are free to remain
here: I could use an assistant, and there are many things to be
shelved and read.” I finish my drink. “You’d best begin with
the fae, for what hunted you were fae in disguises.”

The wandering
magician looks at me thoughtfully. He asks no questions, just sets
his drink down and asks, with deference, if he can begin tonight. I
point out there are rooms above the shop and he needs sleep and food
before anything else. He heads to the stairway I direct him to,
though I think he knows the way already.

I wait until he is
gone and pour myself another drink. And for the first time in many
years, I almost regret the bargains I made with the Shoppe. Even so,
I reach for the phone and dial a number that reaches the oldest
magician in the world.

“There
is a wandering magician,” I say to Mary-Lee, and nothing else at
all as I hang up. There are others who will want to know, but that
can wait. I recall how to get the fire to light, and drink whiskey
and stare into the flames. If the Shoppe has any wisdom for me, I do
not hear it at all.

Friday, March 17, 2017

“Dunwith isn’t the kind of world
one visits. Humans used to joke that they came from a death planet
until they reached it. The thing about death worlds – the real
kind, the killing kind – is that they don’t develop life forms
capable of getting off-world. Or perhaps that intelligence is not
advantageous to survival on such a world. An argument can be made
that intelligence is detrimental to survival but it is not one I
agree with. Further records in System indicate that –. You are
doing it again.”

“Oh! Sorry. I don’t get worried
often so I kinda wander when I do.”

“So noted. I am, however, a
TX83-class Intelligence piloting this vessel. Your mind sending into
my subsystems is not optimal.”

“I didn’t mean to at all but! I
can’t get to Dunwith normally and that’s really confusling you
know!”

“You are on a spacefaring vessel
using a Malkuth Drivel. Is there another travel method I should be
aware of?”

“Lots, I bet, but mostly I –.”
The boy wiggles a hand. He is eleven and, to every scan and probe I
have, entirely human. Ordinary in ways that no human has been in over
a hundred years. “And it doesn’t work to Dunwith, which is really
rude!”

I pause, a second almost an eternity as
I crunch data. I watch the stable wormhole dissolve without a net
loss or gain of energy. “I would like to know how you are doing
this, please.”

“I don’t know yet; I won’t find
out for a few years I think but it’s kind of cheating even if it’s
not since I don’t travel like you do,” he says.

I drop into regular space. Dunwith is
closed, has been since not longer after it’s discovery. There is
one intelligent life form on it. A human boy, identical to the one
beside me.

“He’s twelve,” Jay explains. “I’m
eleven. It’s a hugey difference!”

Forces are balanced and held at bay
within Dunwith. I begin scans. There are variables I don’t even
know, energies that defy scanning. The older Jay is sitting right in
the middle of the most dangerous world and holding it back.

Jay pokes the screens, staring out as I
go transparent. “Oh, me,” he says softly, sounding very sad.

“I am afraid I do not understand?”

“He’s not holding it back. Sorry,
but you think really loudly and he’s not – I’m not – he’s
playing with it. Toying with it. Tormenting it.”

“It cannot harm him.”

“Nope. I’m tough like a Jay and I
get way tougher as I get older and sometimes other things too.” He
sighs, and a moment later is holding a blade in one hand, cutting it
into the air. Whatever barrier is about Dunwith dissolves. Rips.
Every error system aboard me shrieks alarms and Jay winces. “I
didn’t mean to do an oops, but I’m kinda in a hurry,” and he is
gone a moment later.

Somehow I am with him, which I know he
intends. There is an empty field, about it swirls death that falls
away from the blade as Jay walks toward himself. The older-him is
twelve, and the smile he offers contains nothing of kindness.

“What is that?”

“Oh, we won’t run into a Verkonis
blade for years so! I kinda cheated,” Jay says. “Because! you are
cheating by not being jaysome.”

Forces impact. The world ripples like a
mirage, and the universe itself seems to do the same.

“You’re older than me, and that
makes you strong in some ways but being jaysome makes me stronger.”
Jay doesn’t move. “You can’t keep being this, doing this. You
need a hugging,” and this
is beyond scans. Beyond understanding. The last Milieu
War unleashed energies almost beyond the understanding of a TX90 AI.
This is far beyond even that.

“Even
with that blade, I am more than you.” The older Jay laughs, a thing
of broken data and sundered connections. “I can turn you into me
with three words!”

“But you won’t
because that wouldn’t be jaysome and! because I’m taking umbrage
with you being all kinds of rude!”

“Umbrage.”
There is a deep silence after the word. “This is a prompt,”
older Jay says, slow and disbelieving. “I remember this.”

“On tumblr, and
it’s by @thatrandompoet and they’re pretty important to a Jay!”

“You
broke space and time, risked unmaking the future and the past to do
a prompt?” the other demands
in a tone of pure incredulity.

“It is a very
important prompt.” And Jay grins, only this grin is fierce as much
as joyous. “And you need huggings badly and I can’t give them to
you so I’m making a way toward them!”

The blade breaks,
or twists, and Jay is gone between one moment and the next.

The balance with
Dunwith is unbroken, but the death world does not attack the older
Jay. He looks about, waiting. “He made it jaysome. Of course he
made friends with the most dangerous world in the universe. I am done
with this place.” He lets out a sigh, shakes his head and is gone a
moment later.

I am unharmed. I
take no umbrage at that. I wait, and I do not know what for. I think
Jay will return, but I do not know when. And so I wait.

The Dark Woods had been silent for two
weeks: it was the only thing anyone in the Kingdom was talking about.
The last time there had been no monsters emerging from it to harry
our lands, a dragon had taken root within. The dragon had bound all
the monsters under its awful power and emerged to conquer: three
cities had burned to ash before it was contained as everyone who was
never there remembers. The Queen does remember: the ancient
succession of ruling queens almost broken, the death and destruction
that are birthright and warning both.

And so I was sent forth. Once a Knight
of the Realm and now the royal Champion for my sins. Champions have
leeway that knights do not, because so few last in the post. An
ill-judged joke had sealed my fate but I knew destiny answered to
luck as much as fate. My blade had the best poisons I could find, my
armour the best enchantments that money could procure and my mount
prepared for war. I had survived four weeks longer than the previous
ten champions. I did not expect to survive this.

You entered the Dark Woods with armies
or you did not survive it. It was almost midday, and the forest might
have looked almost ordinary save for the shape of the trees and the
ancient warding wall that still held it back from expanding into the
known and unknown realms. “Tirel,” I whispered to my mount. “hold
still.” And I rode into a forest of thick overhanging trees. Within
moments, it was barely possible to see that the sun was shining at
all. I whispered a word, and the blade shone with pale fire.

That the energy came from me and not
from Tirel or the blade was a secret only Tirel knew. A Knight of the
Realm did not use any magics – a champion far less so. I considered
the matter of my own survival to me far more important than any
custom, no matter how well-intentioned it was. The forest about us
remained dark, but the lesser shadows skittered away from the light
of the blade. There were paths that were mostly the flee routes of
prey so we made our way along some to wind deeper into the wood.

The blade flickered, and I cancelled
the magic within it, rested a few moments and set it to blaze again.
I had no desire to waste my resources and the magic lasting only an
hour let me know when a real hour had past – which was at least a
solid connection to the world outside. An hour into the woods and we
were not dead. Nothing had even tried to kill us.

“The Queen was right,” I said, as
much for the sound as anything else. Even the insects in the woods
were silent. My voice left no echo. “There is something very bad
here.”

And I urged Tirel onward. I had my
duty, if nothing else. It is a cold mistress, but not as cold as
death.

It was three more hours before I
encountered anything else. A skraeling: a small thing of shadows, too
thin to be real. It emerged from a tree, or between two trees.
“Human? Human unwise, being here. Dark place.”

“This is the Dark Woods.”

“No. Worse. Empty.”

“Where is everything?”

“Hiding from the monster.”

“Where is the monster?”

“Heh! Funny human. Mad human. Follow
the road. All roads leads to the monster. All and every one.”

“Why are you here?”

“Home. Stayed. Everyone fled, but
stayed.” It’s eyes blazed for a moment. “Everyone fled but this
is my home,” it hissed.

I blinked, made sure I kept still. Gone
was the odd halting, weird voice. Only a monster spoke to me now. It
grinned mockingly as I raised my blade and vanished before I could do
anything.

I let out a breath and pushed my mount
onward. The forest remained so empty of sound that not even the dead
seemed to haunt it and I had it on very good authority that they did.

We reached a grove after five more
hours of travel. My sword still burned, though keeping that magic
going for over seven hours had begun to tire me a little. Not a lot,
but a little could be a lot when facing any kind of monster. My
father taught me that a lifetime ago.

The grove was large and unnatural, as
if the forest was trying to pull itself away from something more than
anything else. Tirel shivered a little and I got off my mount slowly.
Despite the grove, there was no light coming down from the sky: no
starlight, no moonshine. Just darkness, under which sat a human boy
of twelve staring into space. I knew he was twelve somehow, but had
no idea why.

“Tirel. Kill.”

Tirel moved. The warbeast only looked
like a horse, and had once driving a young dragon away from me long
enough for me to launch the final poisoned strike into it. The beast
moved, a blur of ancient magics in a horse-shape, and the boy just
stood up. He moved almost slowly and Tirel wasn’t there a moment
later. No clash of magics, no terrible power. Tirel was simply gone.

“I am tired of being attacked.” The
voice sounds human, but there are things under the words I have no
words for. “I thought I would be left alone in a dark wood.”

“You have been noticed.” My words
sounded almost like an apology.

“I will leave then.” And he
gestured, casual in the cruelty of it, and the world itself tore open
in front of him like ripened fruit to become a doorway to some other
place.

“Wait. I would have your name, to put
on Tirel’s grave.”

He turned back. “You think you can
use grief on me? Guilt?” And each word drove me back a step. I had
no words for his expression. “My name is Jayseltosche.”

“But I know you. My grandfather
defeated the demon Archon with your aid.” I didn’t mean to speak
the words out loud.

“I was eleven. I was a different
person then.”

I opened my mouth.

“If you ask me to be jaysome, I will
end you and your world.” The words were soft, flat, and contained
only truth.

I watched him step into the portal and
vanish. Felt the dark woods shudder about me. I turned and walked
home, and nothing that returned to the woods tried to stop me. I told
the queen there was a monster, and it had left but was not gone. She
asked no questions. She even let me retire a year later, which no
Champion has before.

But I wasn’t a Champion anymore. I
don’t know what I am anymore. I walk the streets of the Kingdom. I
find children whose faces remind me of the terrible look in Jay’s
eyes. And I help them, try to pull them away from something too deep
to be called an abyss. It is all I can do, to make amends for being
too afraid to try and help the monster in the dark woods.

I open my eyes to warmth pressed
against my body. It’s 4:23 in the morning and Jay is curled up into
my in my bedroom in the hotel suite, trembling and trying to seem
asleep. He knows not to get into a bed with my or Charlie: no matter
how far from Outside the universe he’s from, Jay appears to be
eleven. A couple of incidents of people entering rooms and finding a
boy curled up to sleep against an adult when there were two beds in a
motel room and the like led to incidents. Enough that he doesn’t do
it at all, hasn’t in over two years.

Most days bring new beginnings, when
one deals with a very jaysome Jay who has more adventures than entire
civilizations manage to do. Old beginnings repeating themselves are
worrying; I try to hide that when I speak. “Jay.”

He opens his eyes, looks at me. There
are no words. I remember the time he couldn’t see. The prices I
paid that cost his vision and returned him. For a moment his eyes are
unseeing as fear that threatens to spill out of him.

“Kitchen,” I say, the promise of
food and drink a binding. I get out of the bed, throw on a shirt over
my jeans – all magicians learn to sleep clothed early on – and
Jay is wearing clothing as he pads out after me. His silence deafens
the world. Most of the time getting Jay to be quiet takes effort.

The kitchen has a small table in it. I
boil water, making myself instant coffee and him some hot chocolate.
Jay sits, staring up at me, hands tight together on the table.

“Want to talk about it?” I offer as
I sit across from him.

Jay blinks, starts, staring up
wide-eyed at me. He licks his lips, the nervousness almost human. “I
had dreams, Honcho,” he whispers.

I don’t drop my drink, but it takes
an effort. Jay doesn’t dream often. When he does, it tends to be
about the Far Reaches far beyond the universe, terrible threats that
none of us can face. Messages more than dreams, I think. “About?”
I ask.

“You. And – and Charlie. I did a
binding so I’d have dreams, and I maybe kinda had your dreams by
mistake?”

“Oh.” I drink my coffee slowly.

“They were bad dreams, Honcho. About
when the fae put you into the first tree for – for lots of years –
and about hurting me even if you didn’t?”

I blink. “Jay. You were blind for
over a year because of me.”

“But that was an adventure,” he
protests. Because I am Honcho, and I can do no wrong in his head.

“Then why did you crawl into my bed?”

“Cuz I was in Charlie’s dreams a
bit too and she has dreams in which she doesn’t think I’m
jaysome!” And Jay looks so utterly shocked and lost at that.

“Well, you do tend to blow up
microwaves, kiddo.”

He sniffs. Loudly.

“Jay. The solution is to have your
own dreams.”

“But but but –.”

“Which means facing why you won’t.
Not can’t,” I add before he can protest. “Won’t.” Jay
slumps visibly at that. “Which means going Outside the universe
with me.”

He shakes his head even before I finish
speaking.

“Jaysel –.”

“No!” And Jay cuts me off before I
can say his real name, glaring up at me. “It’s not safe, Honcho!”

“We do have allies. And I am me,” I
add dryly.

“No. I would be found if I’m
Outside the universe and and and my mother would come. And eat me,”
he adds, so quietly I barely hear him.

“Jay. We are bound together. I can
protect you.”

“You can’t.” And I make a sound
in my shock, because Jay looks up. His face is anguished, but he
doesn’t look away. “She’s too big and she’d eat all of us and
we’d be gone.”

I stare at Jay. Part of being Honcho to
him means I can solve anything. Even if I can’t, his faith in me is
unshakable. Or was until this morning. I take a deep breath and nod
to him. “All right. We won’t do that.”

And he relaxes, and further into the
hug I offer him, shuddering all over.

There are things I never mean to do.
Lines I never wish to cross. Lies I never wished to tell even by
omission. I hold it all inside, and quietly begin to make plans to
deal with Jay’s mother. Sometimes the new only comes with the
destruction of the old. And the least I owe to Jay is peace.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”